EXTRACT FOR
Invisible and Beautiful
(Author Unknown)

Notes from my Grave: 

If she's invisible, isn't every Woman beautiful?

      

      And that was the hook I was looking for. Time was NOT going backwards. We were all moving forward as usual, except for me dropping through star clusters, being abused by the living dead, shitting rocks, or picking angel feathers out of my hair.

      Come to think of it, this is the most attention I've gotten in my entire life.

      (I cannot even comment)

      But memories are being erased. People have a reset button in their brains, but no off switch.

      I just call that poor planning.

      But if memories can be erased, and I can be thrown around through the stars, the sky, under the earth, through the oceans, then there is something else going on.

      And it dawned on me.

      The Toilet Tourist.

      The Toilet Tourist was someone I had not thought about for a long time.  I never really even believed that he existed, even though I saw him myself, in my own bathroom, taking a picture of me while I was on the toilet.

      It was the desert, it was summer, it was hot, and I had just dragged myself out of the shower without much interest in anything.

      As I sat on the toilet, a man, dressed as all ugly Americans dress when traveling overseas ??" Hawaiian t-shirt, Bermuda shorts, knee high white cotton socks, sandals ??" walks into the bathroom.

      Like any tourist, he doesn't pay any attention to where he is, what he is doing (in my bathroom, for instance) and could care less about intruding.

      But several things came to mind almost immediately.

      1) "Hey! There is a guy in my bathroom!"

      2) "I'm sitting, naked, on the toilet."

      3) "This guy has a camera, and he's taking my picture, of me, sitting on the toilet!"

      4) "The camera is like something out of The Jetsons ??" big, bulky thing, with handlebars as grips, and three spirals along its huge nose.  More like a 1950's television set on a portable TV tray table."

      5) "The guy, the camera, and the Hawaiian t-shirt are all transparent."

      Not being one to jump to conclusions (I once had coffee with a possessed man at a very nice café on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, Los Angeles, when I noticed that through his very dark sunglasses ??" being worn inside a very dark room ??" the man's eyes were glowing red.  Where they should have been white.  Not wanting to be rude, I expressed concerned over his health.  The man with the dark sunglasses leaned forward, tipped his glasses down, allowing me a very clear view of the red of his glowing eyeballs, and said to me: "I guess I am just going through a cleansing." Later, it occurred to me that this had been a demon devouring the soul of the body he was inhabiting. Oh....).

      I did not comment as the Toilet Tourist snapped a photo of me sitting naked on the toilet, and backed out of the room without a second thought, no doubt hurrying to catch his tour bus.

      This led me to my next forgotten memory, both of them.

      I was on the local bus in Wellington, New Zealand (well, Island Bay, but it's on the other side of the world, so who cares?), after having seen the movie Alice in Wonderland.  I was very moved by this film, in a way I still to this day do not understand (hey, I'm moving through hyper-dimensional space, I don't have time to figure out every little thing that comes my way, okay?).

      But as I was taking the bus downtown, maybe a twenty minute ride from Island Bay, through Newtown, and into Wellington CBD (central business district), a man got onto the bus.

      This is not a truly remarkable statement: it was a bus. But as I was sitting just behind the front door, I had an excellent view of this man as he got onto the bus.  He was a gay bodybuilder, with the traditional gay bodybuilder ensemble: tight stretch pants, tight stretch sleeveless pullover, crew cut hairstyle with serrated edges cut in (like his head was a pop top beer bottle ready to be snapped open).

      I had no interest in this guy other than the fact he was holding up my bus ride.  He gets onto the bus, flashes his very best "hi, I'm a really good looking gay guy" smile at the old lady driving the bus, flips out his slick and very fancy wallet, complete with bus pass, snaps the wallet closed, flashes a parting smile at the little old lady again, and cruises past me to the back of the bus.

      But, hey, it's Wellington (or Hollywood ??" neither place that I want to see again), things happen.

      And so the bus finally starts to move again.  Next stop, a few folks get on, just go to their seats.  No show, no drama, no big show stopping performance.

      Next stop:

      Guess who gets on the bus again, less than five minutes later?

      Yup ??" Mister really gay bodybuilder, with the traditional gay bodybuilder ensemble: tight stretch pants, tight stretch sleeveless pullover, crew cut hairstyle with serrated edges cut in (like his head was a pop top beer bottle ready to be snapped open), flashes his very best "hi, I'm a really good looking gay guy" smile at the old lady driving the bus, flips out his slick and very fancy wallet, complete with bus pass, snaps the wallet closed, flashes a parting smile at the little old lady again, and cruises past me to the back of the bus.

      Strangely, I noticed this.

      The exact same guy gets onto the exact same bus, on the exact same day, five minutes later.

      And I am watching this happen.

      I try not to judge.

      Mostly back then, I tried just to plain ignore.

      But it was not just the fact that the same very gay body builder gets onto the exact same bus on the exact same day five minutes later.

      No, that doesn't bother me.

      What does bother me is, that no one noticed.

      Except for me.

      Which reminded me of the other special event in my life that I truly wish I could forget.

      I was working for NASA, and was stationed at Caltech in Pasadena.

      The old credit union office on campus was in the basement of the Keith Spaulding building, and no one went down there unless they had to go to the credit union, or the printing department.

      Why?  Well, it was dirty, it was smelly, it was stuffy. And, oh yeah, it was haunted.

      Now, talking out loud about ghosts on a campus filled with scientists (scientists being the single most closed-minded people in the world) is just not done.

      Now, we all knew the basement was haunted; we just never talked about it.

      Me? Not a scientist, more of an office temp, I didn't mind either way.  The ghosts never bothered me, so I never bothered them.

      But this one day, I am in the credit union, making a deposit.  There is one other customer, and three ladies behind the counter.  This place was really small, the five of us basically filled the entire room.

      I was telling one of my usual, self-deprecating bad jokes, and I guess the ghost just did not approve, because a standee on the counter in front of me, filled with brochures, went flying off of the counter, and hit the ground next to me.

      And then, it got interesting.

      Everyone who had been talking, laughing, telling jokes, including the lady I was talking to, suddenly were looking very intently at their hands, their paperwork, the tiles on the ceiling.  

      Anywhere except for the standee, and the brochures on the floor.

      All talking stopped.

      Time did not stop.  It just was put on hold.

      Except for me.

      I am watching this happen around me.  I had seen things leap across rooms many times, so that was no big deal.

      But these people were different. 

      Why?

      I decided I had better do something, so I bend down, pick up the brochures, the standee, and put them back together.

      As I placed the standee back on the counter, time begins again.  Now, everyone is talking, laughing, telling jokes.  Nothing happened, as far as they are concerned.

      So I put these incidents together, and I wonder.

      If these things that I saw are common occurrences, things that are happening every single day all around us, and if we are all programmed NOT to notice them, what else are we NOT noticing?

      What else are we not seeing?

      And now, it's almost time for me to land in Christmas, again.

      If by now you know my diaries, you can guess what I think of Christmas!  It's left over from several thousand years ago when the god Osiris was hacked to pieces by his brother Set (they were fighting over his wife, Isis), and hid his various body parts all over the world.

      Well, if Isis could find all the bits, they had the science to bring her dead husband back to life.  But Set hid the vital male organ (you might say), and without all his parts, he could not be brought back to life, and so Osiris was truly dead (wouldn't you be?).

      So Isis, being a very practical wife, hung symbols of her now truly dead husband's vital male organ on pine trees as a tribute to him.

      Today, we hang ornaments on a Christmas tree.

      And oh, by the way, Jesus was born on September 27th.

      Nice man, married his half-sister Mary, had children, partied with his half-brothers John and James, traveled a lot (thanks to the Romans, who built roads, and kept the Empire safe for travelers), and his fellow Jews put him on a cross.

      Funny thing is, Jesus was only up there for a few hours. As far as I remember, he had a nice long life.

      And since he was, in fact, the son of Julius Caesar (the Senate of Rome had declared that old Julius was indeed, a living god), turns out that Jesus really was the Son of God.

      But that is a different story...

      I was certain that Odessa had some of my answers.

      From the diaries of

      Jefferson Milton Davis

      



Chapter One: Odessa

      

      Odessa

      "Hello, Jefferson,

      I would be very glad to get to know you better, Jefferson! 

      I'll tell you a little about myself and will be waiting for your reply, ok? So, what do I start with? Well, I graduated from a University and became a travel manager. 

      But to be honest with you, I don't really want to work by this specialty. My dream is to be an interior designer. I finished an art school and I adore drawing. By the way, I work as a nail designer now (I make manicure and draw various things on nails). Interesting, isn't it? Well, maybe not for you, 'cause you're a man and you don't need things like that.

      I also finished a musical school, piano department. 

      I like reading classics. My favorite writer is Remarque. I like old Russian movies and cartoon. There's something real about them. But probably you've never seen any Russian movies.  

      I adore going out of town to nature. In summertime my family and I go to the woods to collect mushrooms. I also like picnics, barbeque and things like that. I hope you share this interest with me, because I would love going out to a lake, river or forest with my future husband to spend time with and relax. I'd like my husband to be a real strong shoulder to me. I want him to be my solid support. I want to live and create for my only one. I want us to be one! 

      I really want all my ideas and plans to be fulfilled. I would like to give joyful and positive emotions to this world. And if you like to do it with me, let's try! It's always better to have someone you love by your side, isn't it? 

      I hope to hear from you soon, Jefferson.

      Warmest wishes,

      Odessa"

      

      Jefferson

      "Hi Odessa,

      I am very happy to hear from you!  And I would also like to get to know you better as well.

      I have seen movies based on Remarque's work, but have never read his books.  I will go to the library and see what they have.

      Did you graduate in music and interior design from University?  

      I was a classically trained lyric tenor with a four-octave range, but I finally think I have a voice that might actually be worth listening to, and am working on my first solo CD.  My hope is to release my first solo CD the end of this year.

      I love going into the country, and my plan is to buy land in a forest somewhere and build a sustainable organic farm, with a small hotel, a nightclub with a nice dance floor (I study Salsa dancing), and horses.  I would love to breed Frisian horses, even though I have not been on a horse in many years.

      You will have to show me how to collect mushrooms, or help me to grow our own!  I love to cook and to bake, and will need you to design us a big French country style kitchen, complete with heavy wooden table, and a huge barbeque.

      I hope to hear from you again soon.

      Jefferson"